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Tag Archives: trademarks

TM TKO has now incorporated visual indicators of citations in knockout search and manual search results. There is a gray circle for any citations “inbound” during prosecution, and there is a red circle for any “outbound” citations against other applications. You can click on either circle to see full details on the cited marks, to hop into their file histories, and more. This data is also available via the magnifying glass.

Visibility into cited records adds considerable depth to the search report. Knowing how frequently the USPTO is citing this application as a bar to other applications helps you more accurately judge the risk that filing might pose to your client’s mark, and secure better outcomes for your client with less research time.

TM TKO’s new Office Action analytics let you prepare smarter, better Office Action responses in less time. Our tools do the complex research for you, instantaneously. See a full example of the kind of Office Action analytics that TM TKO provides, or try it now from your Tools menu.

Issue-driven analysis: instantly provides you successful responses for similar marks for similar products or services to help you build on the successes of others. Pull any TSDR document in formatted PDF or plain-text format.

Examiner details: compare your Examining Attorney’s allowance rates on this issue with others in that Law Office and at the USPTO overall, and see recent successful responses for your issue and your Examiner.

Citation histories: do deep dives into citation histories at a click. It’s easy to understand complex webs of co-existence, assess your own chances of success, and see how the cited prior filings have interacted with other applications.

ThorCheck

Office Action analysis integrates with ThorCheck, TM TKO’s ground-breaking comparative research tool based on a precedential TTAB opinion, to find examples of co-existence of the same mark for two sets of goods with different owners. This evidence helps you push back against likelihood of confusion claims. You can also use ThorCheck to provide confusion evidence as the senior party in a Letter of Protest or opposition.Search Upgrades

Office Action and prosecution data is now integrated across our platform.

Results in knockout search, manual search, and watch results all feature easily accessible citation data, full TSDR file histories with Office Actions and Responses tagged by issue, and quick links to prosecution analysis. Just click on the magnifying glass icon for a wealth of research options.

It’s rare that someone hasn’t enjoyed some of the writings or fictional worlds of some of the great fantasy authors, like J. R. R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, J. K. Rowling, and many more, even including the rare writer who does not use their initials as a part of their name. Let’s look to see how some of the most common tropes from “high” fantasy fiction have turned into brand names.

As it turns out, the frequency with which book authors use each of these terms, as tracked by Google Books N-Gram analysis, is very similar to the frequency with which those terms are using a trademark. On the trademark side, looked at these terms just as stand-alone words; doubtless, there are some additional uses as a part of compound or unitary marks consisting of two or more conjoined terms, but this suffices to show general trends.

Dragon and wizard led the way in both N-Gram use and trademark filings, perhaps not surprisingly. The only exceptions to the order of N-Gram usage were “dwarf,” which was underrepresented in trademark filings (perhaps out of deference to those with achondroplasia or similar conditions), and “hobbit,” which was overrepresented because The Saul Zaentz Company, which acquired some Lord of the Rings-related rights in connection with a 1978 animated film, owns a bunch (in fact, every single active registration or application for that mark) of filings in the US in connection with merchandising deals.

Immigration has been in the news frequently over the past few years, and increasingly so in 2017. We took a quick look at whether the rate of immigration-related filings at the USPTO has changed markedly over the years in a way that reflected the political salience of the issue. The search was limited to a handful of immigration-related terms in the descriptions of goods and services, and is not anywhere close to a definitive count of all marks filed for immigration-related products or services. Just for one example, the search does not even try include broader descriptions of services, like “legal services,” that could encompass immigration-related services, like immigration law.

Recent years have certainly seen an uptick in immigration-related applications, surging from fifty a year in the 2000s to around 150 per year in the last three years. The following chart summarizes the increase in average yearly application rates.

While the trademark application rate for specifically immigration-related products and services has increased significantly, it has not increased in relation to the increase in overall trademark filings. The following chart normalizes both immigration-related filing activity and overall filing activity. While not exactly in lockstep, the ratios are quite similar; if anything, overall filing volumes appear to have jumped more than immigration-related filings.